Moving = Torture

So the big move finally happened.  We will not be moving again barring any drastic circumstance changes for a very very long time.  I simply don't have it in me to move again because the process for moving is torturous!  But, but! we are almost done - just one more room with boxes in it, and that's the master bedroom where the kids spend the least amount of time.  Well, except for when they are chasing Chubbies as our room is as close to a sanctuary as the cat can find. We are definitely loving the neighborhood and it is so kid friendly that it's only mildly embarrassing when Adrienne has a screaming fit in the middle of the sidewalk.  That's good, since the fits seem to be a daily occurrence.

The thing about moving into a new house is that the amount of work to do is seemingly never ending.  I've just spent the last hour of my life looking at light fixtures and the hour before that, rugs.  Don't get me wrong, I love doing these kind of things, but they are time consuming and quite pricey!  I'm surprised the credit card company hasn't called yet to notify us of the huge amount of spending activity on our account. And I forgot to mention the fact that I rarely have 2 hours to do such internet searching with my little lovelies around because, ya know, they don't love it when I don't have ALL of my attention on them.  And as I just finished that sentence, little Ade just woke up from he nap.

I have a few more seconds to write so I'll update you all on Adrienne's developing vocabulary...new words:

Stinky
Eeewww
Gross
Park
Drink
Pee yew
Big girl
I got it!
tickle tickle tickle
peas (please)

and also, because I wasn't sure how to spell it...I found this out r3egarding pee yew from another blog:

1) "It's a shortened term for puteo, which is Latin for 'to stink, be redolent, or smell bad.'"

2) "The normal spelling is "piu," but is often pronounced as "pee-yew". It's root is the Indo-European word "pu," meaning to rot or decay."

I'm not making these up

Phrases I've recently heard of which I will refrain from naming who said them and also my response to them.

"I can't eat any meatloaf because my thumb hurts and I have to go lay it on the couch!"

"My belly only has room for dessert left."

"Mommy, I have to tell you somethin'..."

"Why does Adrienne poop so much?"

"Ohmygoddamnit."

"Spank my booty" ... "where did you hear that?"... "Karis."

"Stop talking to me like that."

"Daddy, I lost my gum...it's somewhere in your bed!"

"I'm such a great artist, right?"

"Can we [insert request] for my five birthday party?"

"Daddy, you da man."


And here are some pics of my lovelies getting into and using and entire jar of cream, not lotion, cream.  This project took them less than a minute to complete as I was busy cooking dinner.   As you can see from this post, we have a lot of fun in this household!

And one of our cat, Chubs, who is also having fun by way of having Dora stickers applied to him.

Interview With an Almost Five Year Old

I stole this idea from someone else but thought it was cute enough to take...an interview with Luke on February 24, 2012.

Favorite TV show: Wow Wow Wubbzy

Favorite activity/thing to do: I like to do everything

Favorite Colors: Pink and blue

Favorite Food: Spaghetti and meatballs

Favorite Drink: Chocolate milk

Favorite Dessert: Candy

Favorite Sister: Adrienne (thank God!)

Favorite Book:  Thomas the Train short stories

Favorite Song: ABC's

Favorite Toy: CD player/ CARS!

Favorite Sport:  All the sports

Favorite Store: Walmart - where you get toys

Favorite Vacation: Florida

Favorite Thing to Make:  Pictures

Favorite Thing to do at School:  Painting, but I like to do all of the things at school

Favorite Thing to do Outside: Ride my gator

Favorite Shirt: "Future Fisherman" shirt

What do you want to be when you grow up:  A dentist so I can fix peoples' teeth

Artist in Residence

We have a mini Picasso in our presence.  Luke loves his painting and his work is just as abstract as Picasso's!    We have many, many masterpieces in his collection already and sometimes we even set up gallery exhibits right in our very own hallway.  Aren't we lucky to have an artist in residence with us?  Mrs. Robinson, Luke's  teacher at Canandaigua Montessori School even sent us a note one day with something along the lines of: It isn't a day if there isn't a "Luke" painting done.

It is very hard for our artist to make his creations in the presences of his unappointed protoge though.  Sometimes she attempts to make additions to his works that he finds all wrong.  Sometimes she spills his paint.  Sometimes she adds a little color to the walls of his studio.  The artist (formally known as Luke) usually likes to wait to paint until said protoge is taking a nap.

Earlier in the school year, Luke was asked what "work" he liked best at school - this is his response:

And this little gem is not a painting but rather a drawing of people from our young artist:

Here are two more paintings but these had some help by the young artist's mentors (see if you can pick out who the subjects are):

Island climbing

I'm about to remove all of the kitchen table's chairs and banish them to the basement.  We'll just eat dinner standing up - not like I actually sit for all that long when I eat my meals anyway.  They are chairs, they are not ladders for the kitchen island, they are not monkey bars, they are not step stools, they are chairs.  For behinds.  Not for feet.

Little miss monkey is giving me daily drills on how to quickly remove your hands from the raw chicken you are working with, race around the island,  and save a small human before it has a chance to use the counter top as a high dive.  I promise you, Dawn dish soap from the dispenser is not a liquid form of candy nor is it body lotion.  Leave it alone.  Get out of the sink.  Get off the counter.  Put that chair back!

Rinse. Repeat.

I'm sort of afraid to enroll her in gymnastics.  I'm afraid the climbing will be further encouraged but this time with the flair of an attempted back tuck (good ol' back flip in layman's terms).

I hope this stage passes quickly or we might be ordering a helmet.  Or perhaps a straight jacket.

Christmas 2011

Christmas was a little over 3 weeks ago and I am just now recovering!  We had so much fun with all the holiday excitement and gatherings and meals and family and friends and gifts and gifts and gifts and gifts...

This year's festivities were particularly exciting because it seemed to be the first year that Luke "got it." He was very into Santa - and very concerned about his status on Santa's list.  Each day, who am I kidding, let me rephrase, each hour we were discussing which kind of behaviors Santa liked and ways to get back on to the "good" list.  Luke was also very concerned about which list Adrienne was on and strangely enough, was always informing me that she was on the naughty list.  Hmmm.  Santa will continue to keep a close eye on Luke.

But Santa was very good to us all this year.  And aunts and uncles and grandparents and friends were very good to us this year, too.  But as sad as I am that the season is over, I sure am glad to have the space back in my living room where the tree was.  And I'm glad that I don't have to pick up the ornament fatalities anymore but I'll miss the daily homemade ones. 

Because I'd be writing forever, I won't list out all the fun things we were lucky to receive this year but look for some new photos displaying some our new toys!

  

Thanksgiving 2011

So it's the Monday night following Thanksgiving and I feel like I could go to bed now at 9:00 pm and that still wouldn't help me recover from the holiday festivities.  That and I have to participate in a conference call in 30 minutes.  Hardly seems fair that I'll be dialing in to talk HR while Matt's out for Monday Night Football with the guys at the local watering hole.  I want equality!  Actually, this body could not handle being hung over on a Tuesday so I'm going to consider this as a blessing in disguise.

So Thanksgiving was fun.  Lots of activities, lots of people, lots of food,  not so much sleep, too much booze.  The kids had a blast as usual while all of the jesters of the court took turns entertaining them.  I normally consider myself head jester but I think Uncle Tommy and/or Karis borrowed my title for the weekend, one I'm very willing to share.  Luke took his usual 875 turns on the trampoline and Adrienne her usual 600 turns on the swing - or the woo woo as she started referring to it as.  Was that correct English?  You know what I mean.  Oh and Luke learned how to use and iPhone - he's a pro at Angry Birds!  Aunt Emily had quite the grubby little iPhone decorated with Jello fingerprints by the end of the weekend.  And one more point of interest while we are talking about Emily, Adrienne called her by her name!  No, she didn't say Yummers, she said "Emmy!"

My mom graciously babysat while we went out on the town for a few hours one night.   We came home to find her asleep next to Adrienne.  Of course both kids woke up at some point while we were gone.  They apparently didn't hear Santa when he said he wanted them to sleep through the night.

Before I go and jump onto my conference call, I want give a shout out to Big Nick to wish him a happy 27th birthday!!

November Update

As usual, life’s been moving at a million miles per hour.  It seems as though every weekend has been taken up with, well, life.  We’ve been out of town a lot lately and when we are in town, it seems as though we get around quite a bit.  

I am pleased to say that this weekend is going to be the only “down” weekend we’ll have until 2012.  Not much planned and I like it that way.  Oh, Luke does have swim lessons but we don’t even count minor commitments like that!

I think we’re all still recovering from our trip to Michigan this past weekend.  We went to a wedding on the Meyer side of the family.  4 adults and 2 kids crammed into a rented mini-van for an 8 hour road trip 2x in one weekend. mixed in with partying, fun, lack of sleeping and general over-stimulation - sounds like the basis for a comedy, eh?  We did have fun and the little ones had a blast.  Luke was the MVP of the dance floor not only for his dance moves but also for his ability to pick up the not-so-single ladies!  He’s got a gift, that’s for sure.  Adrienne also enjoyed the dance floor a bit, but more for the colorful lights coming from the DJ stand than for the music.  She did a few shakes of the booty though.  

We’re all trying to catch up on sleep as I’ve been trying to communicate to Luke and Adrienne that anytime before 6:00 am is not an appropriate wake up time.  We’re getting there - slowly but let’s hope the time change the the long dark winter hours at least induce some sleepiness onto the wee ones.  

Here are some Halloween pictures since I didn’t manage to get a Halloween post out!

Friends for a few minutes

Mooooooooooooo

Super Why!

An old picture I found of Matt and I back in the day

So we've obviously been up to a lot since the start of school!  We've been attending festivals, checking out area attractions and just general busy business.  Luke is in swimming lessons these days and I'm thinking about signing Adrienne up for gymnastics.  She seems to be rather coordinated and is a little climber.  I've started working out  and reading again and Matt's studying for the CFA exam - we like a lot of activity - can you tell?  Oh and we've been house hunting, too! Once we get a house, I'll be able to start a new hobby of house projects.

Luke has started reading - yay!  He's known his letter sounds for a while now but he's been putting them together at school and thus, he was sent home with his first reading book - Goldilocks.  He's been making huge progress in school this year.  Ade's still hanging out at daycare but she's in a new room that has new equipment that she loves.  We're gearing up for Halloween - Luke will be a skeleton (his decision) and Ade will be a cow (not her decision).  We have bits and pieces of Halloween decorations ALL over the house and the floor, and the couch - and they stick to my socks- hmf.

At a winery in Naples - we were feeding the Koi right out of our hands!














My soapbox rant of the day:
So I was reading a "fitness" blog this morning and I was totally turned off by it.  This author is a personal trainer who is now pregnant and she wrote in her blog, don't worry, this won't turn into one of those "mommy blogs!"  Seriously, at least years down the road, I'll have a written account of all the fun we've had along the way, instead of a compilation of posts that all the say the same thing - don't enjoy food and work your body into the ground!

On to more fun things!

Ade with crazy hair and her baby:

 Ade's crazy hair is getting long!

Playing after dinner:

And the Pumpkin Patch: